Well the barbecue was awesome as expected, as were all the other things that happened during my almost-week at Aberystwyth. One of the highlights of it all was that I broke the ‘curse’ that seemed to afflict me during the three years I was actually a student there, by staying until the end of the barbecue. Well, technically I also did that in my first year, but was forced to separate from the group after we later went to a pub, and my underaged sister decided to down three (plus?) pints of Guiness… lame. But she wasn’t there this time. Neither was I excluded from the conversation, or struck down with food poisoning, so all was good! I didn’t take my camera, but I may post photos taken by others as and when I find them.

I left my house on Wednesday morning, the day I’m due at the job centre, because that meant I could get a day ticket and travel to Aberystwyth after signing on for cheaper. But while I was at the job centre, I was referred to another company called A4E (yes, the ones who ran the ‘call my bluff’ course I attended in the early days of my blog). The reason for this is because I’ve been out of work for 10 months, meaning they have to find me a mandatory work experience placement where I’ll be working 25 hours a week for 3 months. Which will be good for my CV, and I’ll be getting extra money in the form of a ‘training allowance’, and to top it all I no longer have to go to the job centre until the period of work experience ends. WIN. The only drawbacks will be less free time, and I’ll probably have to quit my current voluntary work at Plas Tan y Bwlch. 😦

Besides the barbecue, other things I did in Aber included going to Aberanime vice-president’s anime screening, which was fantastic (and since he’ll be president next year, and I’ll be a student again next year, this is a good sign); a few Pokemon battles, surprisingly I won three out of four; watched the live action film Onechanbara, which was so generic and predictable it wasn’t even funny; some nice walks around the seafront; a long game of D&D where we really didn’t accomplish much; but more than anything else we just sat down and chatted about random things. For example, what would be the best things to throw at an enemy castle? Starting off with lobbing bricks, via catapulting and trebucheting increasingly large items, we ended up with what was effectively an entire universe being propelled by rockets. I’m not sure what they were meant to have done to deserve all this, but they’d end up regretting it!

Another discussion focused on D&D alignments. The old ones, because they’re cool. For those who don’t know, your stereotypical Good and Evil alignments are further subdivided into Lawful and Chaotic. It’s the difference between righteous knights (Lawful Good) and, say, Robin Hood (who I’d think of as Chaotic Good). Anything that falls between Good – Evil or Lawful – Chaotic is Neutral. If you’re still confused, here’s a handy diagram:

So during this discussion, we came up with our own alignments based on this system: Awesome – Lame and Fabulous – Fugly, with everything in between being Meh. We spent a long time fitting celebrities into these categories, debating with each other until we’d filled the grid with names nobody could dispute (so glad people agreed with me that Cheryl Cole = True Meh; I don’t dislike her, but think she’s hugely overrated). This was inevitably followed by us rating each other, and as the title suggests I was unanimously declared ‘Awesome Meh’. Which I think is pretty awesome. And a little meh. And now, exclusively to those people who read my blog, here’s one I made myself using anime characters.

Well that’s the best I could come up with in over an hour, anyway. Feel free to let me know whether you agree/disagree/don’t know who the heck certain characters are, or if you feel like making your own then here’s a blank grid. I may make one for female characters, but not tonight…

Living in the middle of nowhere, the fortnightly pub quiz down in the village is the only social event I have to look forward to, aside from irregular visits to friends. And the experience is made all the more fun when our team wins. 😀

‘Our team’ is made up of my mother and father (which is where the ‘old’ part of the name comes from), two friends of the family, and myself. We’re called ‘Yr Hen Bro Hedd Wyn Celts’. Literally ‘The Old Blessed Peace Valley Celts’, named after the local primary school’s football team, which is named after the school itself, which in turn is named after the village’s only celebrity, the Welsh poet Hedd Wyn, except that’s just his pen name. Not my choice of name obviously, if it were left to me we’d be called ‘Team AngryJellyfish’. I feel it has a nice ring to it.

I doubt they’d agree with the name choice though, as I’m largely useless when it comes to the quiz questions themselves – I suck at sport, at film and TV (why are the questions never related to Japanese animation?), and my knowledge of ‘current affairs’ is limited to whatever interesting sounding news articles show up on Yahoo! when I go to check my emails. Geography/science questions are my only real strength. But today we had an anagram round, and I’m the only one in the group who can make any sense of them. My dad solved one, I solved the other nine (that last one took effort though), and we were the only team to get the full set. First time I’ve felt of use to someone since my job as Aberystwyth Anime Society translator was usurped taken over by someone who’s actually a student, and who actually lives in Aber…